He had assets, and liabilities, and a strategy.
And I had spent five years being managed as the most valuable asset of all, right up until the week I threatened to become a liability.
Chapter 5 — The Public Alibi
“And you’ll still marry her?” Gabriel asked.
“After all this?”
“Of course I’ll marry her,” Christian said.
“My whole clean-cut image is built on her — the regular girl, the art-gallery sweetheart who loved me before the fame.
That story is worth millions in endorsements.
Sabrina just wants a real wedding, once, and I can give her that in private.
Genevieve I keep for the cameras.” And there it was, the whole architecture of my life, spoken aloud by the man who built it.
I had not fallen in love with Christian Prescott.
I had been cast.
Somewhere, years ago, a team of people had looked at his image problem — the hidden girlfriend, the secret child, the heartthrob who could not be seen to be taken — and decided the solution was a wholesome, scandal-free, ordinary young woman for him to publicly adore.
And they had found me, at my gallery job, with my clean background and my open heart, and they had aimed him at me, and I had never once suspected that the great romance of my life was a business plan I was the last to read.
Christian crossed to the bed then and took my hand, the way he always had when I was frightened, with that exact practiced tenderness.
“Wake up soon, my love,” he murmured.
